If we started counting songs, poems, books, movies, paintings and all the other forms of expression that have already evoked love among a couple, we would never finish it, love is a subject that seems to have no end, because there is always a new path. to understand it, to tell it. From the most naive manifestations of romanticism to the problematic revelations of the Marquis of Sade, or Anas Nin.
Today, the most accepted idea of love is that it is a lifesaver?that we must trust. Especially at a time when everything is dark and constantly renewed. Love between couples is the promised oasis, even if it becomes a battlefield. Is it also the reaffirmation of oneself, even if it means getting lost in it?What do we love So often is the perfect opportunity to leave behind our cynicism and sarcasm over a life considered happy. Our nihilism, if we believe it, is not worth believing.
What’s so enigmatic about a feeling that, a few centuries ago, didn’t arouse anyone’s curiosity?
In case you like my opinion, my favorite love story was directed by ‘Talo Calvino, in the form of a small fable, referring to one of the greatest warriors of all time. It reads like this:
Emperor Charlemagne fell in love, now old, with a young German woman. The nobles of the court were very concerned that the sovereign, possessed of a burning love and oblivious to royal dignity, neglected the affairs of the Empire. She died suddenly, the dignitaries released a sigh of relief, but for a short time, because Charlemagne’s love had not died with her. The emperor, who had taken the embalmed corpse to his room, did not want to part with the young woman. Monsignor Turpin, frightened by this macabre passion, suspected an enchantment and wanted to examine the corpse. Hidden under the deceased’s tongue, he found a ring with a precious stone. As soon as he put the ring back in his hands, Marlos The Great walked. walked away from the corpse and fell in love with Archbishop Turpin. To escape this delicate situation, Turpron threw the ring into Lake Constance. Charlemagne fell in love with Lake Constance and never wanted to leave its shores.
It is obvious that Calvin’s intention was to propose a new reading of love. He didn’t even give a name to the lucky one who was first the subject of incredible passion. It just says “a German girl. “
Then you get lost in the labyrinths of absurdity: a very famous warrior who worships a corpse and embalss him, does this fable suggest that love does not meet the practical requirements of reason?Which goes beyond the limits of reason and behaves like an invincible. Entry into the world of the irrational, the unconscious, perhaps?
Finally, it presents us with the greatest revelation: love is included in the magical world and this has more to do with us and our internal demons, than with the object to which we direct the feeling of love.
If you are a romantic and an eternal nostalgic of love, you may feel uncomfortable, love is certainly a suffering. However, it is a “good suffering” that no one wants to get rid of. Florentino Ariza, a character from the novel?Love evolves in this logic and therefore tests the foundations of our lives by presenting itself as someone, as someone who wants nothing.
If there is something precious in this feeling, it is that it leaves us on the brink of the abyss into which we sometimes seem to fall. Love allows us to look at emptiness face to face and reminds us that “if God gave us life just to take it, love, on the contrary, was given to us to reach fullness” (paraphrasing a poem by Juan Manuel Roca).
Where is the legend so beautifully written by Italo Calvin?, perhaps it is in the great paradox that inhabits us, in the infinite loneliness that each of us takes as our mark and in the hope of overcoming it, with which we move forward. truth of our destiny as individuals and in the never-fulfilled promise to be one, with another human being. Perhaps, in the same enigmatic phrase with which Pablo Picasso elucidated the raison d’etion of art: “A lie that brings us closer to reality”.
Image credits: Joe Philipson? Thanks to your Flickr